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Hello. Today I feel pessimistic.

But I've been thinking about the latest movements of the wargaming industry and I think that these are signals of a dying hobby.

The Local Gaming Stores are dying because of the Online Stores and an aggresive offer war.
The Kickstarter innitiatives are not helping because game and miniatures producers are skipping the middlemen. So this means, less profit from miniature games, less local stores, less attention from business moguls.
Local Game Stores are being replaced by gaming clubs. And that means that it will be more difficult to get into wargaming if you are an outsider.
The average age of the wargamer is getting higher, we are loosing teens because they prefer their videogames.

Let me put this scenario.
Right now, if a russian multimillionaire is studying where to invest a mountain of money, and if he has the chance of investing in the most profitable succesfull miniature game, their advisors would tell him not to do it because the miniature gaming industry is dying and has no future.

What I want from you is... give me arguments to prove me wrong. I need that point of view. Please.

Well just looking at sales numbers I can tell you the opposite is true, Tabletop games are actually growing at around 20% sales per year. the industry has been described as "explosive" by most people who analyze it.

Are LGS'es dying? Our local ones are expanding again, after an overenthusiasm of establishments in the nineties and early noughties that saw twice as many as we needed locally.

Are LGS'es being replaced by gaming clubs? Locally, the gaming club is the tournament organizer and the LGS is expanding its gaming areas.

Average age might be getting higher, but at the same time all my gaming pals with kids are bringing them into wargaming.

Local Gaming Stores are not dying because of Online Stores exclusively. I would argue the 2007 recession and the continuing ramifications of it today have done more than online stores have. I do agree there are many that have closed, but the other trend is how many have opened up recently and how much of a niche has clubs taken to replace them.

Kickstarters actually give us a quantifiable way of assessing the health of the miniatures market and therefore wargaming to an extent. Of the top ten funded games on Kickstarter, 2 are games that are miniatures based and have made in excess of 2 million each. Outside that top ten, there are several other games that have made close to 1 million in funding for these projects.

Also do not forget that Kickstarters are to fund a launch of product rather than be an end all. Once production is finished, these models become available to the public and LFGS can purchase them to stock in stores. People still go to game stores to buy models and Kickstarters only help fund the diversity for the market.

Going back to clubs, clubs do have a level of insular behavior, but due to social settings such as colleges, social media, and word of mouth, clubs grow and expand. You do have to play nice and work within the system to fit, but not all clubs are filled with jerks and more so than not, are accepting of outsiders, and are not a signal that wargaming is dying. More so, it probably represents a new trend if more clubs arise, but that cannot be expressed without hard evidence either way.

Today's generation is different from the previous. Twenty years ago, TSR had almost no internet presence to go along with the new innovation of global communications. MtG had just been invented. GW wasn't maligned. Many things were different then. Gamers had different options.

Today, we have so many distractions it sometimes can be hard to see how many war gamers are out there. Sometimes video games and war games go hand in hand. Kids still flock to war gaming because it is fun and enjoyable. I cannot stack the numbers again because once more it is not a quantitative number I can toss out, but as one generation of gamers gets older, a younger one replaces it. Most of the time, they fill in the niche abandoned by the prior generation.

In my area it's getting bigger. My prefered gaming store has recently acquired more space and intends to add more tables. They have a lot more people coming in, and sales are going up. It just may seem like it's a dyeing hobby because online people are complaining about the cost, and every other little thing.

I find the opposite is true as well, Wargaming has never had has much support as it has now (at least in Toronto)

It may have to do with where you're from, I couldn't tell you.

We have 3 Major gaming stores near where I am that have a focus on wargaming, 1 on MtG, and 1 other that's about 30 minutes away that does both.

The fact that there's so many places to play whenever you want means it's more or less eliminated the need to have gaming groups at home as it's easier to play on the store's table, and you can buy whatever you need at the same time.

I agree the kickstarters may pose some issues with some retailers but the main store I play at does such a large volume of sales that kickstarter hasn't affected all that much with him as most of the loyal customers will still buy off of him regardless.

As for the gamers getting older, it's kind of a toss up. the main gamers i see at my FLGS are slightly older, usually in their 20's-30's, However, if I go to the local GW to play there's always a younger crowd to play against as well, and as GW has pulled some shenanigans for some time now, they have been looking for new places to play, which leads to an influx of new gamers at other stores as well.

People may say what they want about GW but the fact remains that it's a fun game (In my opinion) And their stores help draw in new people into the hobby at a regular rate, and as those gamers get older they may realize there are other games out there at all, which leads to them trying new games and keeping the wargaming scene alive.

Still going strong in my neck of the woods.

While FLGS success has been tied to gaming availability, I have to say there are more organized clubs doing organized play than ever before. And most clubs advertise events for people to participate.

Indy Tourneys are also growing at staggering rates and having major success.

I feel FLGS success is so tied to local issues with that store and community, I do not feel a single issue is 'killing' them all. Different ones seem to be failing, or succeeding for different reasons. But overall I feel like the trend is for well-run gaming stores to succeed right now.

I do think the one thing that changed this past year is the Kickstarter Hangover we are witnessing, but I am not sure how that is going to actually impact gaming in general or the FLGS.

I have to say I am optimistic. I feel like 2002-2007 was a much darker time in wargaming history which gave birth to many of the new companies we see today.

Its not dying, its getting more popular.

What with all the hipster douchebags and their "nerd" t shirts and all aspects of nerd culture suddenly becoming fashionable.

I think your fears are groundless, GW might have a smaller impact, but miniature war gaming is going fething nowhere.

 BobbaFett wrote:
Hello. Today I feel pessimistic.

But I've been thinking about the latest movements of the wargaming industry and I think that these are signals of a dying hobby.

The Local Gaming Stores are dying because of the Online Stores and an aggresive offer war.
The Kickstarter innitiatives are not helping because game and miniatures producers are skipping the middlemen. So this means, less profit from miniature games, less local stores, less attention from business moguls.
Local Game Stores are being replaced by gaming clubs. And that means that it will be more difficult to get into wargaming if you are an outsider.
The average age of the wargamer is getting higher, we are loosing teens because they prefer their videogames.

Let me put this scenario.
Right now, if a russian multimillionaire is studying where to invest a mountain of money, and if he has the chance of investing in the most profitable succesfull miniature game, their advisors would tell him not to do it because the miniature gaming industry is dying and has no future.

What I want from you is... give me arguments to prove me wrong. I need that point of view. Please.

Tabletop games are bigger than they've ever been. Many places don't have "clubs", and of those that do they're often just groups for people to attend events at stores together. We have more miniatures manufacturers than ever, more miniatures gaming systems than we've had in years, more paint ranges, more bits/materials/etc than ever. There haven't been this many game systems around since before the late 80's wargaming crash when everything was using hexmaps and cardboard chits.

10 years ago, Privateer Press was practically unknown and for most people, the only tabletop game was Warhammer Fantasy or 40k, Spartan Games and Infinity didn't exist, Heavy Gear was practically extinct, etc. Now, GW's still bigger than ever, but there's so much more out there that people routinely see and play.


The only danger I see is that Wargaming potentially may be facing a bubble.

I also subscribe to the idea that the "new crop" of miniature games that started to come up in the early 2000s, and their success, has helped recruitment a lot.

Whilst Games Workshop appears to be stagnating, many other wargaming companies are showing impressive growth, so on the whole the hobby is getting more popular.

Tabletop gaming is doing great. It's never going to be as mainstream as video games, but with the number of small companies popping up and the growing awareness of 40k and Warmachine (which often lead into other wargames) I'd say wargaming as a whole is in a great place right now, especially considering the global economy. Just look at the twelve billion successful kickstarters, small bits sites, the return of Warzone, new plastic manufacturers like Dreamforge and Bolt Action's plastics prove that there's a growing market for wargaming stuff right now. It's a very good time to be playing tabletop games.

Balderdash. It's just as strong as ever, at least at my store, and I've seen our group of players slowly but steadily grow, and the store is doing just fine. No store is going to survive just selling wargaming merchandise alone, and that was probably true even pre-internet, which is why every one I know of also sells board games, RPGs, and CCGs, and some also sell comic books. There's more choice and those choices are more prominent than ever before.

I fail to see how Kickstarter is hurting. If anything, it's allowing manufacturers to remain independent of the stuffed suits who don't know much about games but know a lot about making tons of money, but they can still produce and distribute their product.

As for clubs, well, that seems to be a UK thing; if you go to any of the FLGSs I've been to on their regular game nights you won't be starved for opponents if you're playing one of the more popular systems. In fact, I'm under the impression (and I could very well be mistaken) that there aren't a lot of independent stores in the UK and it's mostly those "High Street" GW stores, in which case I'm not terribly surprised that one could have the perception that wargaming is dying, especially if they're run in the same way they're run in the States.


But it'll never be a mainstream industry that attracts multibillionare investors. And frankly, that's fine.

As others have pointed out: wargaming is by no means dying. In fact the opposite is occuring. The kickstarters are proof of that.

If you were a multimillionaire looking to invest in a wargaming company I'd say: not at this time unless you are okay with a LOT of risk. Over the past 2 years the industry itself has radically fragmented.

In part this is simply because the price points have reached levels that make it financially feasible to jump in. In other words production and distribution costs are currently far below RRP. This is a good thing as it means a lot of competition is being created. However, as an investor it *may* be a bad thing.

The right investment today is to scoop up a few of the more promising ones and combine them into a single company with two or three core ranges. Then work on building that company up. The wrong investment would be to drop a lot of money on any single startup.

As with all things, some of the kickstarters will result in viable companies. Others, however, won't. The only way to tell is to see who is still standing after a year or so. Wargaming consumers are fickle; they buy based on what their friends have more often than what looks good or has the best rules. Price is certainly a consideration; however, it has yet to completely stop any of the entrenched ones from continuing to raise rates. Fairness and completeness of rules are also a consideration; but, again, regardless of what people post on dakka, it's not always a primary concern.

Right now those kickstarters have a good environment to proliferate due to the price model and that the established companies (ie: gw) are slow to turn. Although once the larger companies determine it's time to get off their derriere and do better then the survivors of the kickstarters will have a tougher go and need more capital to expand operations.

Personally, I wouldn't invest in either GW, PP or Battlefront. I think there is room for a bit more competition, at least in the short term.

I think the number of plastic miniature companies that have sprung up shows the hobby is thriving. Immediately that I can think of for historical stuff you can get plastic civil war (British and American wars), Zulu Wars, Romans, Celts, Greeks, Napoleonics, medieval Knights, WW2, for both SF and fantasy there are several ranges of zombies, dwarves, elves, undead, etc.

The variety has never been so good, and much of it priced very reasonably. Independent shops are stocking more alternatives to GW with Spartan Games, Privateer Presss, etc and in greater quantities.

 RatBot wrote:


I fail to see how Kickstarter is hurting. If anything, it's allowing manufacturers to remain independent of the stuffed suits who don't know much about games but know a lot about making tons of money, but they can still produce and distribute their product.

Normally a Mini goes like this:

Manufacturer 60% ---> Retailer 40% -----> Customer $$

Kickstarter is basically (potentially) cutting the retailer out of this equation. Not only can I then discount my product further than I could if sending through a retailer, but I can increase production. It is all great when Game distributors and mini makers can now make a product on their own and profit from ti directly. Like independent musicians releasing albums directly.

The problem is, unlike a musician who has no need for a record Label... FLGS provide a place for people to PLAY these games and in some cases is the *ONLY* place people play these games. If the store can't sell your product, then the store won't let people play your game. And even if you let people retail your game... the KS has already drained the market as most people who are 'turned on' to your project got the product directly for a deep discount. So the retailers are getting the post-launch hangover which is a much smaller market.

So KS works out GREAT for miniature makers, especially ones who don't have a game associated with the minis, but I think is a hard sell for sustained game play.

But we have yet to see the impact (if any) actually play out. All I have seen is people are being stingier with KS money due to the current in-flight KS not delivering or not meeting expectations which has been hurting KS projects who have been like 'we missed funding? what did we do wrong?' and the answer is "the money is gone, you are 6 months too late"

I don't know that most people who are interested in a product contribute to the Kickstarter and the stores are left with the "scraps" so to speak. It's true that the most deeply interested people are going to contribute to KS, but quite a lot of people won't. The Warzone Kickstarter has 325 backers; if that's the majority of people who will buy Warzone minis, then they're destined for failure anyway.

In the same vein, without Kickstarter, many of these miniatures might not otherwise exist. Sure, you could try to get more traditional venture capital, but the wargaming market seems to be even riskier business than other fields, and if you do get it, you're beholden to those investors, and how many arguably questionable decisions have companies made under the premise of "appeasing shareholders" (and I don't mean specifically GW)?

I do agree that it's too soon to really see the impact of Kickstarter. All I can say is that when Warzone is released, and if Mantic's future Warpath Kickstarter is successful, that'll be more product that I can order through my FLGS, and thus more money from me to them.

I'm also thinking about the depth of these KS innitiatives. Where does those games go after the KS hype is gone.

When I see miniature companies they have their game and they keep releasing new stuff and expanding the gae or re.sculpting their stuff, and that brings news, excitement, forum flames, good miniatures, bad miniatures... but all that activity makes the game have "life" into it. The usual weekend chat about what's coming... all that stuff.

What is going to happen with Sedition Wars, Zombiecide, Kingdom Death, Relic Knights... ? Where are they heading to?
Kickstart a box, people buy the box, ok, what's next?

Without news the bubble of that game dies.
Seems to me that we are moving towards tabletop games while wargames are a dying format. It is easier for companies to sell a playable box than to build a constant need for the customer who has to buy more and more miniatures.

not from the increased numbers I have seen at my games club..

 BobbaFett wrote:
I'm also thinking about the depth of these KS innitiatives. Where does those games go after the KS hype is gone.

When I see miniature companies they have their game and they keep releasing new stuff and expanding the gae or re.sculpting their stuff, and that brings news, excitement, forum flames, good miniatures, bad miniatures... but all that activity makes the game have "life" into it. The usual weekend chat about what's coming... all that stuff.

What is going to happen with Sedition Wars, Zombiecide, Kingdom Death, Relic Knights... ? Where are they heading to?
Kickstart a box, people buy the box, ok, what's next?

Without news the bubble of that game dies.
Seems to me that we are moving towards tabletop games while wargames are a dying format. It is easier for companies to sell a playable box than to build a constant need for the customer who has to buy more and more miniatures.

Well, the ideal situation, I would assume, is that the Kickstarter gives them the money for an acceptable line of products that will sell well enough that the producers will be able to reinvest and expand the product line. Really, it's not fundamentally different than getting start-up capital through traditional means (I would think, I'm not a businessman), except it's much more public, and instead of giving the "investors" a stake in the company and potential cash returns through dividends, they get first dibs on the actual product at a discount rate.

As for "what's next?".... well, it's just too soon to tell. Kickstarter has only really taken off in, what the past year?

Nah not dying. However, those damn card games are taking over my favorite store!

I disagree with your assessment that wargaming is dying but there are a LOT of changes going on right now and your local area may certainly be suffering because of it. I can see you've touched on some issues that I agree are current problems though. The truth is that gaming in general is more in style than it ever has been, but there is also a vastly broader market than there ever has been. Even if wargaming is splintering off from the central GW hobby into smaller and less visible sub-communities; board games, card games, and rpgs are still doing pretty darn well.

 BobbaFett wrote:

The Local Gaming Stores are dying because of the Online Stores and an aggresive offer war.

That issue is nothing new but very true. Game shops can't provide purely retail anymore, they have to find a way to monetize their gaming area and community -either through direct fees or by leveraging them as advertisement. Brick and mortar will always fall short of online shops sale for sale, but there are profitable shops out there. This trend of fewer shops does point to a big problem of low recruitment though.

The Kickstarter innitiatives are not helping because game and miniatures producers are skipping the middlemen. So this means, less profit from miniature games, less local stores, less attention from business moguls.

Kickstarter exploded in 2012 and backers are already becoming more demanding of projects. I think it will only be another 2-3 years before only the most polished and developed projects get the kind of money we've seen from the big projects. Also, those games may get funded through kickstarter, but still have to make their profit at retail. Expansions and additional waves sold at retail will determine if these projects are a success so cunning developers will start to cater to retailers as well for continued success. The whole process is still very new right now. Give it time for new methods of balance to arise.

Local Game Stores are being replaced by gaming clubs. And that means that it will be more difficult to get into wargaming if you are an outsider.

I'll have to take your word for it. Clubs tend to be a UK/Europe thing. Here in the states clubs are extraordinarily rare. What I can say for sure is that lower recruitment is a serious problem so I think we are in agreement on this issue.

The average age of the wargamer is getting higher, we are loosing teens because they prefer their videogames.

Blaming video games is a little narrow-sighted. I grew up with my NES, SNES, and playstation and I'm still a big wargaming fan. Wargames have been surviving in competition with video games for decades.
In my estimation this reiterates the precarious state of recruitment.

Wargaming is on the grow! I've been gaming only since the early 90's, and while I bemoan the loss of many FLGS's, from a product standpoint there's never been a better time to be a miniature wargamer.

It's true that there are a whole crop of board wargames that will most likely not survive past the initial box set, but that's ok, that's to be expected with Board Wargames.

At the same time we're seeing an explosion in traditional wargames manufacturers. Historical rulesets (and plastic minaitures to support them) are increasing, Privateer Press is doing well. A very small, but growing community of gamers are growing the 15mm sci-fi genre. And there are scads of small businesses set up just to support the hobby.

Even GW, though stagnating, isn't in a fast decline, and othe proven companies/games like Reaper, Battletech, Inifinity are doing well.

As for kickstarters, don't believe the hype about them killing gaming. Only a very few kickstarters (reaper for one) gain anywhere near a large enough market share to be a net hurt to FLGS's. If it's a good product it will be continued in the FLGS shortly thereafter If not, it will die.

As for a refocusing on "clubs" I haven't seen it, but word of mouth and having a person introduce you to gaming is a more powerfull way to build a LASTING gaming community.

As for the death of the FLGS, around here, there have been a few FLGS that have died, but there have also been some that have opened, and the bigger, better run stores have continued on and even expanded. It may be different where you are, but in some areas over here, rumors of the FLGS have been greatly exaggerated.

As to a multimillionaire investing a ton of $, it's not really a realistic proposition because the wargaming industry has NEVER been the place to invest. Hobbying is just not reliable, but that's not a new phenomenon.

My question to the OP is how long have you been gaming? No offense intended, but my point of view is that it's very hard to be pessimistic (unless one is already inclined in that direction) if you've been in the game long enough to see how much better it's gotten.

Flgs just had its biggest year ever last year, and so far this year our sales are ahead of where we were last year at the same time. Our Warmachine events just keep getting bigger as well.

Eilif wrote:


As for kickstarters, don't believe the hype about them killing gaming. Only a very few kickstarters (reaper for one) gain anywhere near a large enough market share to be a net hurt to FLGS's. If it's a good product it will be continued in the FLGS shortly thereafter If not, it will die.

I think in the long run those will be net gains as well for the hobby. While a lot of people bought into the Reaper KS, what it also did was made good news for miniatures and gaming in general. Since they are not in peoples faces like a lot of other hobbies are (there were MtG boosters in the impulse buy racks when I was getting some groceries this morning) a lot of people who had played various games when they were younger and moved away for various reasons often assume that tabletop gaming has died out.

When you have main stream news sources like the Wall Street Journal running stories about Reaper Miniatures KS - that is good for the visibility of the hobby in ways that I think far and away offset the short term impact of a few thousand people getting their fix of miniatures (granted, they will still be in the market for things like rules, more paints, brushes and all the rest).

Regarding gaming though, the rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated. There have been a lot of fluctuations since I started gaming in the early 1980s. Sometimes you see stores shift their focus from RPGs to wargames to CCGs back to RPGs to boardgames... Smaller stores often attempt to chase the latest gaming fad, larger stores are able to serve them all with minor adjustments in their stocking habits. People may move from playing in stores to playing in clubs or in peoples houses as well.

All of that said though, it doesn't mean that it is the type of industry that could be considered to be booming. The vast majority of people who are involved in it are part timers. They run a miniature company, write rules or sculpt in their free time while still holding down a day job. Most of them do it because they enjoy what they are doing, not because it is a great investment of their time or money. Many of them are just barely breaking even when you look at their expenditures from an objective position - and that includes some of the more successful companies.

There seem to be a lot of new wargames hitting the market, so there must be a market for them.

From my experience games clubs help boost sales. My local club has attendance of 30+ every week and is very welcoming to new players. One person comes down the club with a new game, a couple of weeks later half a dozen or so are playing the game (if it's any good).

Space Marine definitely did that. I'm not too up to date these days so I can't say what the current game is.

In England at least most of the cheapest online bargain sites are based around stores to act as a distributor. Both London Darksphere and Nottingham Wayland Games, the biggest online distributors besides maybe GW itself, are based around stores.

If a company is started from Kickstarter does that ordinarily mean that they aren't going to find distributors as apposed to supplying directly. I honestly have no idea. It doesn't sound advantageous.

Gaming stores are getting replaced by clubs? I don't necessarily see that as a problem we can't live with.

Computer games may attract people into the hobby as well as out.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Don't feel so down. It's not the end of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxA0QVGVEJw

After stopping everyone from taking me seriously and quite possibly patronising someone I must bid adieu!

**Tips hat and leaves**

 zilegil wrote:
If a company is started from Kickstarter does that ordinarily mean that they aren't going to find distributors as apposed to supplying directly. I honestly have no idea. It doesn't sound advantageous.

Most everything that's been kickstarted and is carried by the store I work at is available through standard distribution channels.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I think the number of plastic miniature companies that have sprung up shows the hobby is thriving. Immediately that I can think of for historical stuff you can get plastic civil war (British and American wars), Zulu Wars, Romans, Celts, Greeks, Napoleonics, medieval Knights, WW2, for both SF and fantasy there are several ranges of zombies, dwarves, elves, undead, etc.

The variety has never been so good, and much of it priced very reasonably. Independent shops are stocking more alternatives to GW with Spartan Games, Privateer Presss, etc and in greater quantities.

That is partly because plastic injection moulding is a lot cheaper nowadays, yet it also proves at least a perception that there is a demand for the kits.

There are also plenty of companies doing metal and 15mm stuff, new scales like 10mm, and more variety in some older scales such as 6mm and 20mm.